


Did you ever notice we say 'people' like we're not ones?

by SweetPollyOliver



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, Families of Choice, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:33:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9533903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/pseuds/SweetPollyOliver
Summary: Voyager is home, but Seven isn't sure where 'home' for her is. Sarina has been working on that one herself for a while now.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmic_llin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/gifts).



> Written for Round 7 of trek-rarepair-swap
> 
> Between going back to college and getting hit with a virus that had me more or less laid up for a full week, I've been very behind on my fic this month and will have to do the ole chapter by chapter thing, I'm really sorry!

During the first week after their return, Seven had, along with the rest of the crew, been put up in a hotel very close to Starfleet Headquarters. It was not, truly, any more convenient than billeting them further away would have been—one could beam in from Siberia as easily as they could from a few blocks away, but it was what had been decided. 

For all that the crew had been anxious to return to their family homes, more than one crewman remarked that it was like a giant slumber party. It was not an unfitting analogy. The atmosphere for the first few days could only be described as giddy, and, although she had observed no pillow fights she could not be certain none had taken place. 

Despite the happiness of her fellows, Seven felt… unsettled. One by one, people were cleared to go and, one by one, they left. She felt each absence keenly, even of those she had not known well. Voyager had been her collective. She had no other with which to replace it.

Her aunt visited her twice and both times offered her home to her. This provoked a number of emotions in Seven—guilt was foremost among them. Her aunt loved her. It didn't seem to matter to her that she had not known her since she was a child, nor that she had since grown up into someone who that child should never have been. 

This kind of unconditional acceptance and affection was, if anything, uncomfortable. She did not know how to reciprocate it; she found her aunt to be a kind and pleasant woman, but she did not have an automatic, profound love for her in the way that she felt was expected of her. 

She felt that Naomi Wildman may have been able to relate the best to her predicament, being, as she was, on the verge of meeting a father whom she had never known, but Seven was reluctant to sow the seeds of that particular anxiety in her young friend for the sake of trying to alleviate her own uneasiness. Instead, she worried alone and counted off names in her head as she passed increasingly fewer numbers of her peers every day. 

She was one of the last to be cleared. This was not surprising to her as, even in a ship half-crewed by Maquis, she represented something quite out of the ordinary. 

At the very least, she was not always alone: Captain Janeway often accompanied her and when she could not Commander Chakotay went in her stead. It was on such a day that Seven's debriefing was finally complete and she was left to finally face the question of where she was to go from here. 

"Seven," Chakotay stopped her from rising with a touch of his hand when Admiral Sendak had left the uncomfortably large conference room her final interview had taken place in. 

"Commander," she replied.

"Seven," he repeated with a gentle reproof in his voice.

"Chakotay," she tried again, softer and gentler. 

"So this is it," he said. "End of one journey, start of another."

She had been so sure she would be able to get through the day without crying.

"It's okay, it's okay," he said, wrapping his arms around her. 

"It does not feel ‘okay’," she said and clung a little tighter. 

"You've had a long day and this is a big moment," he said. "I cried too when they were finished up with me. So did Harry—I nearly wanted to bring him out for a banana split." 

A short bark of sob-laughter escaped her and she buried her face further in his shoulder.

"Seven… come live with me," he said suddenly and her heart dropped out of the bottom of her stomach. In a moment, the arms around her changed from feeling comforting to constricting. Nothing about _how_ he held her had changed, but she couldn't go back to feeling the way she had just a moment ago. "I want to be with you. I know we haven't been seeing each other for a long time, but-" 

"I-" The thought of escape was a sudden and irresistible lure. "I need to go."

She pulled away, his arms falling away from her sides easily, and turned away from him quickly—not quickly enough to avoid seeing the look of naked hurt on his face—and ran to the door.

* 

Back in her hotel room she leaned back on the door with a slump and slid until she was sitting on the floor.

Against the background noise of her panic rising, she searched for reasons for her reaction. 

She enjoyed Chakotay’s company. She _liked_ him. She had been apprehensive about where she would live and about being without the Voyager crew and, for all that he was just a single member of that crew, his was surely a more attractive offer than imposing on a family member she did not remember.

What was it that so terrified her about those words?

_Seven… come live with me, come live with me, come live with me_

She gripped the sides of her head and screwed her eyes shut and started to rock, her back impacting hard against the door each time. Her skull was saved from a similar fate only because she had leant forward to curl her body into a protective hunch, drawing her head towards her knees.

A flutter of cardboard falling against her leg made her jump a little in surprise and disturbed her rhythm. 

It was a postcard. A puzzlingly antiquated item Tom Paris had replicated a stack of and passed around before he and B'Elanna had left with Miral. He had, in a round and fluid hand, seemingly accustomed to this form of writing, included on the back details of their destination, B'Elanna's new posting and his intention to take a leave of absence to care for Miral, along with some rather sentimental, if generalised, well wishes towards the reader. 

She remembered him coming around three days previous and sticking it in the doorjamb, as she had been on the verge of heading out for yet another interview, before pulling her into an unexpected hug and saying "Come visit us anytime on Deep Space Nine."

*

ONE YEAR LATER

Sarina stepped out of the airlock and smiled at Julian before putting her arms around him and returning the peck on the cheek he gave her. 

"It's been a long time," he said. 

"Well we both could figure it out to the second, so I'll spare you my party trick," she replied with a laugh. "I missed you."

"And I you," he said. 

The weight of what had passed between them the last time she had been here hung in the air for a second, like gravity had increased temporarily, but then it lifted. 

"How is Dr. Vassik and his family?"

"They're fine," she replied, smiling at the thought of her foster family. "The children were worried about me leaving. Vassik and T'Rell were too, but they have better poker faces and they didn't want me to feel patronised. I am a big girl these days, after all. I hardly ever cry when I get lost anymore." 

For a moment, she worried that Julian's face would go soft and sad like any other normal person's tended to when she joked like this, but instead his eyes crinkled and he chuckled while he took her arm. 

"Well whatever you do, don't mistake me for a responsible grownup," he said. 

"What kind of an idiot do you take me for?" she asked. "Making the same mistake twice, I ask you."

As they stepped out into the Promenade she was hit by a wall of sensation and she blinked once to adjust to the brighter light. Julian gave her arm a squeeze. 

"It doesn't look so different," she said.

"It is," he replied. 

Just then a bell sounded and children of various ages began to pour out of a door a few metres ahead of them, followed by a statuesque blonde woman with a child on her hip. The child was part Klingon, which made determining her age harder than the Bajoran children, but the woman was…

"Seven!" 

Another woman, part Klingon as well, approached the two of them with a wide smile and the child reached out towards her. 

"That's B'Elanna Torres and Seven of Nine with little Miral over there," Julian said, noticing her staring. "They're a case in point really. B'Elanna's the new Chief of Operations and Seven's reopened the school." 

Sarina swallowed around a dry throat and redirected her gaze.


End file.
